House Building: London

Wendy Morton Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for housebuilding in London.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank all hon. Members who enabled me to secure this important debate. It could not be more timely, as house building in London has collapsed. In the first nine months of 2025, construction began on only 3,248 homes. Molior London predicts that just 9,100 homes will be built across 2027 and 2028—that is under 5% of the Government’s target for London. London is supposed to deliver more than a quarter of the Government’s 1.5 million homes target, but given the construction slowdown, that target appears to be dead in the water. That is the inevitable consequence of the Mayor of London’s disastrous London plan and the Labour Government’s anti-growth policies.

Three things have gone wrong. First, Sadiq Khan’s London plan has comprehensively failed to get London building. With more than 500 pages and 123 planning policies, the London plan makes it more complex and expensive to build in London. A 2024 review found that it takes seven weeks longer to determine major planning applications in London than in the next four largest cities. Sadiq Khan’s planning requirements also add to the cost of building in London. For example, the London plan goes beyond the national energy requirements, imposes carbon targets, and has policies on overheating and energy statements. Whatever the merits of those policies, they all add to the cost of building homes. In places, Sadiq Khan’s planning policies actively restrict house building. For example, the London plan effectively bans house building on large swathes of industrial land, often within walking distance of public transport.

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is painting a really bleak picture for London. Does he agree that to build the homes that we need in this country, we should focus not only on increased density in our city centres, but crucially on brownfield sites? We are not seeing from the Government a determined brownfield-first approach to housing that would protect the green belts surrounding our towns and cities.

[Mr French]

I agree that we should have a brownfield-first approach, seeking to protect our green belt and countryside wherever possible. I understand my right hon. Friend’s concern and her representations on behalf of her constituents.

The Home Builders Federation warns that the London plan’s net zero requirements are imposing carbon offset payments of £3,000 a home. Even when building on brownfield land is allowed, it is fraught with problems. The mayor requires 50% of homes to be affordable, which, given the remediation costs on those sites, makes development unviable. Altogether, the London plan review in 2024 found that Sadiq Khan’s policies frustrated, rather than facilitated, development on brownfield land. That is why it is so disappointing that the Government stopped the mandated partial review of the London plan a year ago, saving their mayor’s blushes.

Secondly, Sadiq Khan’s affordable homes target has made many housing projects unviable in London. By demanding that 35% of homes built privately are affordable, he has made house building unviable in London.

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[Mr French]

I absolutely agree, and I appreciate the hon. Gentleman making one of his well-respected interventions in this important debate. We have to make sure that across the country, we are building the homes that people want to live in and that people can afford, including people in older age.

Demanding that 35% of homes built privately are affordable has made house building in London unviable. The higher 50% target for industrial land also applies to public land, which, again, has effectively blocked development in the capital. This policy may seem like a good way to get London building more social housing, but it has hugely backfired. The policy is effectively a tax on house building. It makes some development unviable and deters investment. It ultimately means fewer homes and higher costs. If a developer cannot afford the target, they face six burdensome checks on the project’s viability before, during and after construction.

[Wendy Morton]

The key thing is that until the Government recognise that they need to put some support into brownfield regeneration, our green belt and our green spaces will always be under threat.

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[Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)]

Of course I will, Mr Mundell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) for securing this debate. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for his excellent speech, much of which I agreed with, especially about using the TfL space.

The TfL chairman is Sadiq Khan and, as Mayor of London, he is responsible not only for TfL but for house building in London. If we look at some of his promises in 2016, he said his first priority would be tackling the housing crisis. His first manifesto promised a step change in new housing supply, and that 50% of new homes would be affordable. Here we are nearly a decade later, and he certainly has not delivered that step change. House building has in fact ground to a halt—it is down 73% in London over the past year. The Government have had to step in to water down City Hall’s anti-growth affordability targets, because there is no way of avoiding it: despite Sadiq Khan’s boasts, he has comprehensively failed to build. After nine years at the helm, Sadiq Khan has nothing to show for it. Four fifths of homes built last year, as previously mentioned, were approved under Boris Johnson’s mayoralty. The average home in London cost £483,000 in 2016. Today, it is about £560,000. The average rent cost £1,292 per month in 2016. Today, it is £2,252.

As has been discussed, it is not a question of money: Sadiq Khan has been given nearly £9 billion to deliver on housing in London. It is not a question of powers; he has strategic planning powers in London. Instead, it has been about bad policy. His London plan is onerous and expensive to adhere to, and his affordability targets have acted as a tax on house building. The Government know this. Instead of addressing the problem, they are dancing around the issue. They scrapped a mandated review of the London plan after independent experts found it to “frustrate rather than facilitate” building on the brownfield sites that my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup discussed.

The Government have cut the community infrastructure levy but kept the more expensive mayoral levy. Instead of taking powers away from the failing mayor they are rewarding him, giving him power to call in developments of 50 homes on green-belt sites. Instead of removing the obstacles to building on brownfield sites they are weakening green-belt protections.

[Wendy Morton]

My hon. Friend speaks passionately about this, but does he not agree that this absolutely shows the problem with centralising not just targets but powers in the hands of one person—the mayor or a combined authority? We need much more involvement of local communities, and we need councils to have a greater say on planning matters.

[Peter Fortune]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. It is worth re-emphasising that the mayor has had responsibility for delivering housing in London for nine years and has fundamentally failed to deliver on his promises.

On weakening green-belt protections, which matters so much to those of us representing outer London boroughs, it is a bizarre decision to effectively block building on vacant former industrial sites in inner London near tube stations, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup, and instead force thousands of homes on to poorly served farmers’ fields in Bromley. If the Government want to meet their housing targets, they need to realise that Sadiq Khan is not a builder—he is a blocker, and the record proves it.

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[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) on securing this debate on such a vital issue. I echo many of the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). Her neighbouring constituency now includes a ward that used to be in my constituency—a ward where house prices are reaching £2.5 million to £3 million in some cases. That is one end of the scale.

At the other end of the scale we have a homelessness situation that is intolerable, with thousands of people on the waiting list. Exactly as my right hon. Friend said, every week I visit people in their homes, which is something that MPs do. We see people where they live, with the problems they have: triple bunk beds with little space for the third child to get into bed; five people in a room; and toddlers with no space to run around. I could give a different example every week, but a real one. This is what we need to resolve, so I welcome the Government’s plan to build more homes.

There are a lot of challenges. The right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) mentioned the “brownfield first” approach as a priority. There are plenty of brownfield sites in my constituency. I say “plenty” but, like the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury, my constituency is very small in relative terms but expensive to build on.

House prices in Hackney are 18.5 times average income, so all the young professionals who might want to get on the housing ladder are stuck in shared accommodation, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury said, and families are stuck in social housing, crowded and unable to go anywhere else because they cannot afford private rent, which gives no security anyway. Homeless families are increasingly in hostels for years. Only six years or so ago it would have been about six months before people had a chance of getting some sort of property, and now people are being moved out of the borough, wrecking their lives and opportunities.

We have 3,400 homeless households in temporary accommodation, which is a big issue for us all and costs the taxpayer a lot of money. It does damage to the families and the children’s opportunities. It breaks our communities, and all taxpayers have to fund that, so we need to resolve it. We have a total of 8,500 households on the council’s housing register, and the notional wait for a three-bedroom property is over a decade—it is a nonsense wait, because by that time the children have grown up. Around 44% of Hackney residents live in social housing. We have more private renters than homeowners and that level of social housing residents. Even though house prices are going up for some, the housing situation is worsening for many others.

Hackney council has been great at delivering properly affordable social housing. Affordable homes, which include both social rented and intermediate, make up 57% of council housing-led delivery. In crude terms, if Hackney council wants to build a home because of the land value, which I will touch on, it has to build one for private sale to pay for the one that is for intermediate or social rent. When I say to people, “We are working hard to get you a house,” they look at the houses I am pointing to on the neighbouring bit of land and say, “Will I get one of those?”, and I cannot, hand on heart, say that they will within any reasonable period of time. The devastation this is having is surely feeding into our special educational needs and health crises. It is just not long-term sustainable.

Since 2022, the current council period since the last council elections and between now and next April, 956 council homes for social rent have been in design, planning or acquisition or under construction. It is cheaper to buy back a leasehold property on a council estate than it is to build new, because it costs £450,000 in Hackney to build a new social rented home. It is no wonder we are having challenges delivering and no wonder that the Government and the Mayor of London are trying to work out a way to get more homes built. If they are all for private rent, we are going to exacerbate the problem, so we need to work that out. Construction costs are now around £5,000 per square metre compared with £1,000 to £1,500 a decade ago. That is being led by a number of issues globally, including Brexit, but this is the reality we are dealing with. When I looked at this in my previous role on the Public Accounts Committee, the Government’s own figures showed—I am sure the Minister is aware—that bricks and mortar subsidies offered the best value for money for the taxpayer to try to resolve the problem.

We need things not just on brownfield but on grey belt. I do think that the green belt has some grey belt —we need to be realistic about this. Bits of old car park that no one is using could be turned into homes. We need to be creative when looking at this.

[Wendy Morton]

The hon. Member makes a really important point about grey belt. I completely understand her example of a car park, but grey belt needs much clearer definition, because we are seeing cases of development that inspectors are now saying is grey belt when it is actually greenfield, and that is really damaging to our communities.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

That is a fair challenge, and I am sure that the Minister will pick that up. It is important that we all know where the goal posts are.

I would like to ask the Minister about the release of public land. This is something that I have looked at over the years. Whether it is the Ministry of Defence, Transport for London or the Department of Health and Social Care, the Treasury has, over many Governments, insisted that that money goes back to the Department. On one level, that is completely logical, but looking at hospitals or schools, if that land could be used for housing, it would help teachers, nurses or doctors to live locally.